Apple updates, cuts price on laptops

Apple’s lightweight MacBook Air notebook is getting faster and cheaper.

The Cupertino company on Tuesday announced that it’s updating the line with faster processors and is slashing the price on all models by $100. The revised notebooks are available today.

“Today we’ve boosted the performance and lowered the price of MacBook Air so even more people can experience the perfect everyday notebook,” Phil Schiller, the company’s senior vice president in charge of worldwide marketing, said in a statement.

The updates are the first in nearly a year for the MacBook Air. The product, which originally started as a pricey notebook targeted at professionals, has become Apple’s consumer notebook line.

The entry level 11-inch MacBook Air now costs $900, down from $1,000 previously. The lowest price 13-inch MacBook Air now costs $1,000, down from $1,100 for the prior version. Both models include a 1.4-gigahertz Intel Core i5 processor, up from a 1.3-gigahertz Intel chip in last year’s models.

Both base models include 4-gigabytes of memory and 128-gigabyte flash drives. All models can be upgraded to 8-gigabytes of memory and 512-gigabyte flash drives.